The family that is hosting us this month participates in many different ministries throughout their community. On Sunday afternoons after church, we serve at a children’s hospital in downtown San Salvador. When they told us the plans for the day on Sunday, I was overjoyed at the thought of being able to spend time with children in the hospital, little did I know it was going to be one of the hardest days on the world race so far.
When we arrived at the hospital, myself, Hallie and Morgan were told we were going to be going to the wing of the hospital for children with terminal cancer. We were going to be singing songs to them and one of the ministry volunteers was going to teach them a short bible story in Spanish. Walking up the steps to the 8th floor of the hospital, my heart was ready to spend some time with these children. I had no idea in that moment that my heart was far from ready for what I was about to experience.
We walked into the wing we were going to be serving at, and it was nothing like I imagined. We were instructed to wash our hands and put on masks before we entered in the children’s rooms. The first room we walked into was about the side of my bedroom back home, but instead of one child in the room like you would see in a hospital back home, there was three. There were also two other tiny rooms attached at the back of the room, with a child in each room in a less than adequate hospital bed, as well as one chair sitting next to the bed. The walls were all made of glass, which means these families had absolutely no privacy on a daily basis.
We danced as the ministry volunteers sang a few Spanish songs in the first room for the 5 children and their parents and then moved on to the opposite side of the hallway where there were 7 tiny rooms, with completely glass walls lined up next to each other. We were told we were going to be going into each individual room to sing two songs to the child. Our first room we walked into was a baby’s room and my heart immediately sank. The sweet baby was crying hysterically as his dad tried to comfort him with a small rattle toy. His dad told us that his son had not eaten in 2 days and that his fever kept spiking. He stood by the crib-like hospital bed, squeezed his sons hand and excused himself to go grab lunch before coming back to sit with his son again. Cristian, the baby, was 9 months old and the label on his bed said he had a form of terminal bone cancer and pneumonia. We sang two songs to the sweet baby as he kept crying and when we were finished, the local ministry volunteer asked me if I would stay in the room with him until his dad got back from lunch.
Instead of writing out everything that happened, I’m going to share with you some of what I wrote in my journal to the Lord after leaving the hospital (the italicized parts). It’s about as close to my heart as I could get after leaving the hospital that afternoon.
God, I don’t understand. I’m angry. It doesn’t make sense. I don’t think I’ll ever forget the feeling of helplessness that I felt as I stood over Cristian laying in that hospital room. I couldn’t touch him, hold him or even speak the same language to him to calm his crying. I couldn’t even sing a Spanish song to him that he would understand. God, how in the world did you think I would be able to handle that. I realized, that I don’t believe in miracles or in your healing power yet. I haven’t seen it. I don’t understand how that small child, a little over 9 months old has terminal cancer AND then he has pneumonia on top of that. How? Don’t you think that terminal cancer was probably enough? I sat there about as helpless as I could ever feel. I don’t think I’ve cried so quickly while praying.
I don’t know if I can still see your goodness while watching a 9-month-old child die in a hospital room no bigger than my bathroom at home. Glass for walls. No privacy. Nothing. That child may have never been outside before. He may have never breathed a single breath of fresh air. He might never get the chance to. I DON’T UNDERSTAND HOW I’M SUPPOSED TO SEE YOUR GOODNESS IN THAT. I don’t understand how I’m supposed to praise you in that. The purple balloon just swung back and forth in my hand as I prayed, cried and tried to sing. Jesus loves me. Father Abraham. Those are the only two things I could think of. Those were the only two that my breaking heart could handle. The pain in that child’s eyes. The tears that kept streaming down his face. The ways that he was shoving almost his whole hand into his mouth. The ways he was kicking his feet just to communicate. His eyes were swollen from tears. His cries grew softer as he lost energy from crying so much. Was he hungry? Was he in pain? Had his fever from the pneumonia spiked again? I don’t know. All I know was that I couldn’t do anything about it.
As I stood next to Cristian’s crib-like hospital bed crying and desperately praying for the Lord to ease his pain so that he would stop crying, a woman wearing a rainbow lei walked into the room and asked me if I had prayed for the child. I’m still not sure why, but I told her that I hadn’t even though I had been sitting there praying for probably 10 minutes at that point. She told me that she came to this wing of the hospital each week and walked around to each child’s room and prayed for miraculous healing. She doesn’t know any of the children personally, but she knows the healing power of the Lord because she had seen it before in a terminally ill young girl named Diana.
The woman walking around with the lei around her neck to each room praying over the children… I’m pretty sure she was angel that saved me from wanting to walk away from my trust in you. She believed. And in that moment of prayer, she believed enough for the both of us. She prayed hard enough for the two of us. I don’t even know her name. I don’t even know why she was at the hospital, but she said she believed in miracles because she had seen one in a little girl named Diana. I don’t know if I do yet.
If that woman had not come in, I don’t know how I would have handled it. I don’t know how I could have gotten through that situation. I don’t know if I would be sitting here writing this to you. It was the first time on the race that I’ve seen pain like that and could do NOTHING about it. Except pray. My prayers sounded broken. I wanted nothing more than to take every ounce of pain that child was feeling and take it on myself. I couldn’t though, and I think that hurt the worst. Lord, I don’t understand. Open my eyes to what I’m not seeing right now.
After the hospital, I was talking to Hallie about the whole experience and explaining to her just how broken I was in that tiny room with Cristian until that woman walked in.
Hallie’s response struck something deep inside my heart. She said, “The Lord still performs miracles daily like He does all throughout the Bible. Sometimes all He is waiting for is people of faith to start asking for them and believing in His healing power”.
It’s clearly time for me to take God out of the box that I’ve put Him in.
